Diablo V Announced Before Diablo IV Reaches Its Promised Decade

Blizzard announces Diablo V while Diablo IV is still far from its promised decade

The paradox is easier to see on the calendar than in the trailer. Blizzard has unveiled Diablo V and announced when it will launch, as reported by 3DJuegos. Meanwhile, Diablo IV —its predecessor— is still within the ten-year support window it was sold with. That decade is still running, and a successor is already on the way. The news has peine the industry's oldest debate: whether the company sells games or sells dates.

The open wound between Diablo I and Diablo II

There is a camp that holds that the first Diablo is the best and that the second is an inferior byproduct: incomplete, dependent on expansions, unable to close what the original left hanging. The other camp, the majority, maintains that Diablo II is pure art and still keeps hundreds of thousands of trinc. The first game, according to its critics, amounts to a hack-and-slash with four stages. The disagreement is not nostalgia: it is about design.

Microsoft, WoW Classic and the recycling business

The skeptic does not point at the design, but at the model. The company is criticized for copying the formula of independent studios, as it allegedly did with WoW Classic by shutting down private servers to reuse their ideas. Added to the erosion of its corporate image and the feeling that every installment is announced before it is finished, the result is a Diablo V that starts out with just enough goodwill. The fifth chapter is being presented before the fourth has wrapped up its story.

How many promises of the future can a franchise take before the future stops interesting anyone?